Brazil Environment Agency Seizes Amazon Soy, Corn

Brazil’s environmental agency Ibama said on Tuesday it seized some 4,740 tonnes of soy, corn and rice grown on illegally deforested land in the Amazon as the country struggles with its environmental image abroad.

Brazil’s farming, biofuels and ranching sectors, Latin America’s largest, have come under fire, especially in Europe, for unregulated expansion at the cost of the environment, particularly in the Amazon. The European Union has been pushing to limit imports of commodities such as biofuels from Brazil on the grounds of sustainability.
The government and large farming interests in Brazil have begun to realize the importance of public relations in trade and are investing to improve the country’s environmental, sanitary and labor image abroad.

“The seizure is a milestone in the battle against deforestation, since it hits exactly at the activities that stimulate environmental crime,” Leandro Aranha, the coordinator of inspection at Ibama in the northern state of Para, in the lower Amazon Basin, said.

Very little of Brazil’s grains and biofuels production occurs anywhere near the Amazon, but the price of beef has risen to levels that makes ranching in the Amazon profitable.

Loggers, shadowy real estate companies and squatters account for most of the illegal deforestation in the region.

Planet Ark